Our Fall 2021 Incubator Seed Grant Winner: Freebird MVMT
Each Incubator cohort, we work to bring grant seed funding to one of our participants to elevate their organization's mission.
This past fall, Freebird MVMT received $3,000 in funding from our partners to further their work. Their mission is to create an unprecedented crowd resource and technology platform, to prevent and remedy wrongful incarcerations, while providing support for exonerees. They work to address the profound injustices and disparity with respect to impartiality throughout the criminal justice system and society.
Photo Credit: Magnus Sundholm
Recently, Freebird launched a beta version of their application process and database to help locate people who have been incarcerated for crimes they did not commit just over a year ago. Since then, they have found over a dozen credible cases and have taken on 4. Most exciting, Nancy Rish, one of the four people they have been advocating for, will be coming home by the end of the year after 35 years incarcerated for crimes her abusive ex-boyfriend committed. Welcome home Nancy!
We caught up with Freebird MVMT founder Maddie Johnson to learn a bit more about her experience in our Incubator, as well as with her organization.
Mockingbird: Hi Maddie, you are doing amazing work! Can you share a little bit about your organization?
Maddie: Of course! Freebird MVMT is an effort launched during the COVID quarantine. My background is in marketing and tech systems, and after watching a documentary about the incarceration system, I just knew something could be done to use my skills to help sort through data and prevent wrongful incarcerations.
Mockingbird: That's amazing! What services do you currently support?
Maddie: Our team uses our crowd resource technology platform to help with pre-trial and trial assistance, post-conviction assistance and post-exoneration resources. When first building the tool, it took several tries, but after the 4th version it worked. We knew we could then bring people together to help spread our services to those who needed them.
Mockingbird: How does someone get involved with the Freebird MVMT?
Maddie: We get asked this quite a bit. There are several channels to get involved as a volunteer and as someone looking for our support. To get help with some of our systems mentioned earlier, a contact needs to apply. Think of it like a college application or portal. We can flag counties, evidence, judges so we know what cases to look at with our data and help out. Volunteer-wise, we are launching a program at the end of the month! We constantly need help with data input and are putting together live virtual groups to help input info, sign petitions and gather signatures.
Mockingbird: That's amazing - we loved seeing your team grow over the course of our Incubator program!
Maddie: Thank you! The main problem with the criminal justice system are the lack of resources. It's time-consuming to review cases and many don't know where to start. Learning how to connect our data-know-how to the world of nonprofits was critical to get this job done. The Incubator helped us establish our systems and framework to really get started.
Mockingbird: What will you be doing next now that you've completed the Incubator program?
Maddie: We're a self-funded organization. With the seed grant, we were able to apply these funds in an unrestricted way to scale and cover overhead through the new year. With this security, we're buying time to collect other donations, grants and volunteers to keep this grassroots movement going.